The More Things Change . . . .

Sixty-two years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, anti-Semitism remains alive and well in many parts of Europe. Defaced, toppled or broken headstones in France, Belgium, Poland or the Czech Republic. Or, the defacing of Berlin's Holocaust Memorial the same week it opened, societal losers continue to demonstrate their bravery through the perpetration of such acts.

Unbeknownst to these genii, they also demonstrate exactly who the untermenschen really are.

Is Anti-Semitism in Europe on the Rise?
A sober show in Berlin offers an introductory treatment -- if not a thorough examination -- of rising anti-Semitism in Europe and the Middle East since September 11.

When an exhibition on contemporary anti-Semitism opened this month at the Foreign Office in Berlin, Deputy Foreign Minister Gernot Erler said it was "appropriate" that the topic wasn't squirreled away in a historical museum but on display in the bright atrium of a German ministry.

"Anti-Semitism has sadly not been left where it belongs, in the poison cabinet reserved for the pathogens of hard-to-cure diseases of the past," he said. "Unfortunately it is a phenomenon of today's Europe which our foreign policy has to confront as well."

The exhibit, called "Anti-Semitism? Anti-Zionism? Criticism of Israel?" is a series of anti-Jewish posters and cartoons from Europe and the Middle East. It covers manifestations of anti-Semitism in the era of September 11, the second intifada, and the Iraq war -- from left-wing groups in Europe calling for boycotts of Israel to white supremacist bands and soccer hooligans behaving badly on the distant right.

"We have to uncover the roots of anti-Semitism," said Wolfgang Benz, director of Berlin's Center for Anti-Semitism Research, in an interview with the German daily Die Welt. (The Center organized the exhibition along with Jerusalem-based Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial.) "Above all we have to show that behind all forms of Jew-hatred there's some sort of instrumentalization: Jews are made responsible for grievances which they had nothing to do with."

The exhibition shows ugly examples of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that surfaced after the September 11 assaults in America and the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia.

Perhaps Kosling Conspiracy Theory No.___ is on display in Berlin?

How appropriate.

There's more. Much more.